Law and Order builds replica of Zucotti Park; Occupiers occupy it

Law and Order was shooting an episode about Occupy Wall Street, and the production team built a perfect replica of Zucotti Park, as it was before the brutal eviction of the protesters by NYPD. So members of the original Occupy camp went and occupied it.

As of about 1:00 a.m., the police had begun to push protesters out of the park and dismantle the set. "NYPD does not respect Law And Order," the crowd chanted cheekily. At one point, an occupier asked an officer, "Are these real barricades, or a set piece?"

Within about an hour police had cleared out the protesters, which was less time than it took clear the real Zuccotti, but probably more than they'd need on a TV show. "You guys just cleared a fake Zuccotti Park," the tweeter @NewYorkist told a police officer, who countered that they'd done no such thing: "We didn't clear a fake Zuccotti," he insisted. "They're taking the set down."

While occupying the set is great fun, makes a good point, and is a nice little coup for the production; hassling the cops when set comes down is entirely pointless. Is that sort of exclusionary, deliberately antagonistic horse shit that’s causing the whole Occupy movement to stagnate and will likely cause it to collapse. It drives away potential supporters (including the UNION, underpaid NYPD). It causes division between the broader group of protesters/supporters/related groups and the relatively small group of habitual protesters and anarchists who are more concerned with how the protest is conducted than its actual message.

Actually many cops are my friends, and my family. And you might be surprised to know that a good deal of police officers support Occupy Wall Street. A good number have participated in Occupy Wall Street. And the vast majority are just as disgusted by the overly violent tactics used by many departments as the rest of us.

The point is its Occupy Wall Street not Occupy One Police Plaza. And the more this descends into deliberate antagonisation of police officers, and any other groups that might be sympathetic or helpful the more this thing loses popular support. Going after police makes the movement look petty, makes the protesters look bad. Its the police who should look bad right now. Going after unions, community organizations, and other protest groups that try to protest is deliberately exclusionary. And there is increasingly a feeling that if you are not one of the dedicated few, young, white, and mostly anarchist protesters who consider themselves the center of Occupy; then you’re un-welcome. And that seems pretty odd coming from the 99%.

“Going after police makes the movement look petty, makes the protesters look bad. Its the police who should look bad right now. Going after unions, community organizations, and other protest groups that try to protest is deliberately exclusionary.

OWS is “going after” people now? If the cops feel unwelcome at OWS gatherings, it is because the cops have used inappropriate levels of force in dealing with unarmed, peaceful protesters.

As for those friends and family of yours who are cops. . . they would not hesitate to pepper-spray you if ordered to do so.

You’re ignoring my point, I also suspect you may not have paid much attention to post in question, or any of the other reporting on the subject. The protesters “occupied” a TV set and spent most of their time taunting police. It took an hour to get them to leave so the crew could strike the set. That’s pointless, and yes its “going after” police, pointlessly.

I’d also thank you not to make assumptions about my friends and family. They would, and have hesitated or refused to pepper spray people when ordered to do so. Pepper spray, tasers, billy clubs etc are intended to provide a less lethal weapon of last resort than a fire arm. The idea being it should only be used to defend the well being of the officer, or bystanders when absolutely necessarily. The use of pepper spray to disperse crowds is considered ineffective and unethical, including among law enforcement. Officers who reach for pepper spray as a first reaction to anything are unfit for their jobs and should be kept out of contact with the public (and often are). Departments that do so as a matter of policy are either poorly run or poorly controlled at the top levels, and change on that front will not come from knee jerk spite for every cop every where.

And oddly enough cops are actual human beings, human beings with a strong union that will protect them if they refuse an unethical order. I think you’ll find most cops fall into this category. When we see otherwise you’re either dealing with a department with a problem from top to bottom. Like Oakland who went full on paramilitary from the start. Or isolated cops, who are bad at their jobs and/or straight up assholes stepping over the line. Combine this with a chain of command that either doesn’t care or is more concerned with PR and you see what’s been going on in NY (at least at the start).

You don’t solve these problems by assuming every cop is the devil and treating them as such. You solve this through policy change, replacing elected officials, and championing the good cops while sanctioning the bad.

What on earth makes you think the cops are “sympathetic?” Use of inappropriate force is the order of the day. If that’s sympathetic then I hate to see what happens when they crack down on something they hate.

One more and than I give up. Because again defending the police is entirely beyond the point.

1. NYPD officers have refused, on several occasions to work the protests in solidarity.
2. Many officers from many jurisdictions have stated they support Occupy.
3. In the early days many officers here in New York, who were working the protests, stated that they supported Occupy. Many implied that working the protests and keeping the proceedings safe was their way of actively supporting the protests.
4. PBAs (the police unions) from across the country have issued solidarity statements.
5. Many police officers have actively participated in the protests. After the initial outbreaks of violence against protesters in NY, officers from the region arrived at the protests. Off duty, out of uniform but wearing their badges prominently. They placed themselves at the front of crowds near police lines presumably to act as a deterrant against more violence.
6. Until about a month ago reports from active protesters around the country but especially here in New York routinely reported on how supportive helpful and yes sympathetic most of the officers were. A major part of the story when the first pepper spray attacks happened here in NY was how surprising it was that a few officers would do such a thing given how kind relations had been over all.

Early on the Occupy movement had broad support from the majority of Officers on the ground, and most police unions. Even in cities where the politicians and police administrations were explicitly antagonistic to the protests. As the tone of the protests has gotten increasingly anti-police this support has been eroded. If the general support of police officers and their unions is lost the Occupy Movement stands to lose support from all of the public safety/civil service community. With the police will go many fire fighters (among the first unions to march in solidarity), nurses, teachers, ambulance corps, and much of our medical community. Even the military and the veterans who have been very prominently involved from day one.

Which is (to bring the back around) counter to goals of the Occupy movement. These are the 99%. Normal, working, often underpaid Americans who have struggled over the last 5 years. Their pensions and other retirement funds have been eviscerated. Their hours, salaries, and benefits have been slashed. They’re hurting just as much as anyone else, and they likely had less to begin with.

But it’s Ok to demonize them and exclude them. That uniform means they don’t deserve it right?

Are you seriously claiming that up till now, and even now, cops support OWS?

Read the coverage of Oakland, and of UC Davis. Read the recent Boing Boing post about the LAPD, where protesters were tortured. Read about the emptying of Zuccotti park where pepper spray was used indiscriminately and private property was destroyed.

These are not isolated incidents, they are part of a pattern of violence.

But you know some cops and they are really great guys, so we should all stop complaining.

This is my last post on this threadt too. There are limits to what discussion can accomplish.

Police officers are just as much part of the 99% as anyone at the demonstrations. And people who consistently bad mouth cops are fools.

To demonize the police is to fall into the same mentality that many cops are victim to, treating everyone the same as the last bad encounter they had. The difference is, cops have these encounters all day, day in, and day out for their entire careers. To make a living. Protestors who attend demonstrations are making a choice to put themselves into a situation where they may have a bad encounter with a police officer.

You can counter with the tired old argument that police officers choose their career, blah blah blah. And you’d be right, to a point. But you’d also argue that you feel compelled to protest the injustices occurring in our society and you had no choice. And you’d be right. To a point.

We need cops. We need good, honest cops that are well educated, compassionate, and dedicated to keeping the peace. And we need those good cops to have good oversight and regulation (just like the financial system), which includes policing their own. That is, unless you want to live in a society where disputes are settle by the barrel of a gun, and at the whim of a mob.

Cops are human. Cops get scared, angry, impatient, and sad, just like everyone else. They get confused, misunderstand commands and intentions. They’re going through the demonstrations just like the protestors. And just like the protestors, if they commit a crime, or act outside of the regulations of their departments, they should be held accountable. I hope Tony Bologna and John Pike both lose their jobs. I hope the clown that hit the vet in Berkeley loses his job. As well as the clown who threw flash bangs at the people trying to help Olsen. After all, isn’t the OWS movement all about accountability?

I think there needs to be a dialog with law enforcement for these protests. Not appeasement. I think the movement should talk to police commanders and commissioners and tell them how they expect their officers to behave. Not to the rank and file. I think the movement should make very public their communication with law enforcement leadership and hold the leadership responsible for injuries and illegal arrests, and for the behavior of cops on the street during these protests.

Cops are human. Cops get scared, angry, impatient, and sad, just like everyone else. They get confused, misunderstand commands and intentions. They’re going through the demonstrations just like the protestors. And just like the protestors, if they commit a crime, or act outside of the regulations of their departments, they should be held accountable.

But they aren’t held accountable. So why are you submitting a fantasy short story in a comment thread about the real world?

A bunch of highly-paid producers and tv show execs, all very much planted firmly in the 1%, are trying to capitalize off of the OWS movement. I mean, I like Law & Order well enough, but this just seems tacky. I can’t say I feel badly for them.

I thought of that, actually. And, you know, I think the creators and writers and those *directly* involved with the show probably have good intentions, and in fact the episode might even turn out to be pretty good, and possibly helpful for the movement once it airs. But the producers and execs? No way. They are concerned with the bottom line, not with making sure the OWS movement is portrayed with tact and dignity.

I just don’t know if it was an appropriate thing for them to do, right in the midst of the movement. Notice I said it *seems* tacky, along with exploitative, even if they don’t intend it to be.

And, you know, I think the creators and writers and those *directly* involved with the show probably have good intentions, and in fact the episode might even turn out to be pretty good, and possibly helpful for the movement once it airs. But the producers and execs? No way.

You know not whereof you speak. The creators and writers are producers and executive producers; that’s the power structure in television. I don’t know much about Dick Wolf or his politics other than that he supported Fred Thompson in ’08 and Bush before that. So he may not be much of an OWS supporter. But you may be surprised how much support OWS enjoys from 1%ers in the entertainment industry, even those who don’t count themselves among the creative types.

Notice I said it *seems* tacky, along with exploitative, even if they don’t intend it to be.

That’s just the nature of Law and Order. They pride themselves on the “ripped from the headlines” currency of their stories, whether or not they’re exploitative or otherwise “too soon.”

The Law and Order programs are some of the only TV shows still shot in NY (and on location). The number of people in this city who have managed to keep them selves working thanks to these guys is absurd. And yes your exec producers and network execs are highly paid, but the people who actually write, shoot, edit, and make photo copies not so much. Those people make almost exclusively below $100k a year, most of them between $20k and 80K. Its easy to say “oh tv people they must be rich!” But over the last 5-10 years its been a struggle for most of us to find and maintain employment. Couple that with the fact that freelance work keeps drying up and shifting to corporate communications and I’m not going to begrudge these guys a little topical publicity stunt.

Notice I mentioned only the execs and producers in that 1% (and the main actors should be included as well, though some of them are probably sympathetic toward the movement, as most actors seem to be pretty liberal). The writers and stuff are likely not part of the 1%, and hopefully that shows when the episode airs.

As an inhabitant of Manhattan, I know this to be true. I also know that the various versions of Law and Order are roundly despised for doing the absolute minimum to avoid disruption, paying the absolute minimum for rent, etc. When you have TV and movie shows being filmed in your neighbourhood pretty regularly, that shit gets old really quickly.
I’m glad they are still hiring and I find it hard to believe there are union production people making $20k in NYC, but maybe there are interns who do.
I’ll be looking forward to the show when I can rest assured that the might of the fictional NYPD and DA department will no doubt be turned on the cops who pepper spray protestors, destroy books and possessions and generally acted like roided-up assholes.

Or maybe the show will portray the cops and DAs as saintly protectors of the status quo same as usual.

Yeah $20k or so is the lowest of the low. $23k is about the lowest I’ve seen for clerical and production assistants. And surprisingly although I’m sure L&O is a union production, I don’t remember their freelance operations being union. And frankly most production work in NY isn’t, unless its directly produced by a network.

but the people who actually write, shoot, edit, and make photo copies not so much.

Depends on if they’re working on union, scripted shows. Writers do okay. The WGA minimum for a 60-minute primetime story+teleplay was $30,823 back in 2007, though I think it’s gone down a distressing amount. (And that’s a minimum; it only goes up from there on WGA-signatory shows.) In a 24-episode season a writing staff of eight can get credited with three scripts each. That goes on top of their weekly pay for being on a writing staff, which is almost three times what I make. Oh, and they get residuals, too. Union cameramen do pretty well, too, making usually over $30/hr with a 60-hour weekly guarantee. Editors make around three grand a week, their assistants about two grand. The dude making photocopies struggles; he makes around $600/week and usually works 60-80 hours that week.

The lesson to be learned: work on the creative side, otherwise the hours are too long and the pay too meager to be worth it. It is true that, much like the rest of America’s economy, it has been increasingly the case that the Hollywood zillions tend to accrue around a handful of obscenely overpaid moguls and celebrities while the lower-level working stiffs labor longer and harder for less (god, I miss the 90s sometimes), but if you’re going to weep for the abused underclass of the entertainment industry, do it for the nonunion laborers, or those working in reality TV, or those who aren’t covered by even the flawed badassery of the WGA, DGA, and IATSE when it comes time to negotiate a paycheck.

While I support the movement, in general, I still fail to understand the war on the “1%”. Much of the 1% support the movement as well. Are you people just angry because they have more than you? I thought we were suppose to be angry because the people at the top of the money food chain were abusing their monetary power over the government, not simply because they have more.

Hating the 1% for being the 1% makes as much sense as demanding student loan forgiveness, demanding an income without working, as well as demanding those that actually worked hard for their wealth to give it up entirely.

It’s mindsets like “they are planted firmly in the 1% so they are the villains” just doesn’t make sense to me.

Sensationalist (it is tv, after all), yes, but authoritarian? I don’t know. SVU especially seems to be pretty progressive. I haven’t watched the main L&O in yearrrrs, though, so I can’t comment on that one directly.

I haven’t seen all that much L&O:SVU, and less L&O:CI, but from what I have seen, both have fundamentally betrayed the idea of the original L&O (especially CI, but also SVU).

In the older episodes of L&O, the cops investigated a crime – doing so like it was a job, and not being some sort of comic book action heroes, they and the prosecutors came up with a theory of the crime, and then they tried to prove their theory in an adversarial setting. The defendant had rights, not all of which were merely strawmen intended to show sleazy defense lawyers obstructing blood-n-guts justice.

By contrast, the “Law” part is essentially gone in SVU and especially CI. The cops are superheroes, are famous, and are frequently facing grave danger to themselves or even their loved ones. They’re no longer merely dedicated professionals doing an important job well; now, they’re soap opera characters and Superman, all rolled into one. The perpetrator is not merely guilty but thoroughly vile, cartoonishly evil. There’s no real doubt about the guilt of the perpetrator, and except for legal tomfoolery intended to anger and frustrate the audience they have no real due process and no real rights. The episode really ends when the star detectives walk in guns drawn (how often did the detectives on the original L&O draw their guns?) or when the detectives bamboozle the suspect into some form of confession.

I’d argue that any drama that deals in morally perfect, death-defying infallible superhero cops and ignores the defendent’s right to due process and a fair trial is “authoritarian”. Doubly so for a drama that originated as a franchise specifically to show convictions being obtained in spite of those rights.

In addition to what Warren said, I’ve always gotten the sense from the original Law and Order series that the intent is really something like: “Oh look, the bad guy got away on a technicality. See? We should have given the GOOD GUYS, those loveable cop and prosecutor pals of ours, free reign in tracking down and prosecuting these guys. Look, all these cops and prosecutors are good, loveable people with our best interests at heart? They just need a little more authority so they can catch all the bad guys!”

In other words, it’s always struck me as propaganda to reinforce the “if you’re not doing anything wrong you don’t have anything to worry about” mindset. This mindset is, in a word, authoritarian.

If there were more episodes featuring overzealous cops and prosecutors, wrongfully accused and wrongfully convicted defendants, and some of the other flaws in the real-world U.S. justice system I might have a different opinion, but Law and Order is a good depiction of the justice system only relative to other cop shows. Relative to reality it’s heavily fictionalized in a way to make the “good guys” look unnaturally good.

If there were more episodes featuring overzealous cops and prosecutors, wrongfully accused and wrongfully convicted defendants, and some of the other flaws in the real-world U.S. justice system I might have a different opinion, but Law and Order is a good depiction of the justice system only relative to other cop shows.

A lawyer friend of mine wouldn’t watch it because he said, “In the real world, the defendant never gets off.”

The best part of this was the opportunity for smart-ass chants directed at the police. I’ve read reports that there were chants of “What are your demands?” directed at the police, as well as, “The police don’t respect Law & Order!” While I’m not really sure what the point is of wrecking a TV set, at least those chants made me smile.

“Hating the 1% for being the 1% makes as much sense as demanding student loan forgiveness, demanding an income without working, as well as demanding those that actually worked hard for their wealth to give it up entirely.”

You “support the movement in general,” and yet your understanding of it sounds like a transcript from Sean Hannity’s show.

If you support the movement, then you don’t believe that they want “income without working.” If you believe that they want “income without working,” then you DON’T support the movement.

There are small groups that are making demands like this, just like there are small groups that verbally attack anyone wearing a suit for being “the man”. My comparison stands, and these kinds of things don’t help the movement solve real issues.

There’s a reason much of the media can go to these places and make fun of the protest and it’s because people pull away from what the focus should be for their own misinformed agendas.

I agree there is a huge imbalance of power between the ultra rich and the rest of the country, and this is something that needs to be fixed. But there’s a difference between working towards a fix and demanding handouts. Demanding “Where’s mine?!” is not what we should be focused on.

The reason I take issue with vilifying the entire 1% for being 1% is because there are 1%ers that support fixing things. Many of them depend on the 99% for their well being and would be harmed by damaging the 99% further. There are 1%ers that do not hold any of the power that the ultra rich hold. Alienating all of the 1% because of the few of them that are the problem actually pushes away a lot of power that the 99% could gain.

Ok, I have to say, this was a combination of brilliance and meta-irony.

Look at it this way. There’s cultural divide right now. We already know that when a protest happens, some people will be supporting it no matter what, and others will be against it no matter what. So assuming that those arguments are going to happen already, look at the bigger picture.

There’s a movement going on, and Law and Order was attempting to capture the moment of it. Their “set” was at best a facsimile, comparable to companies that sell pre-faded jeans to try to be cool. And it was discovered by the people they were trying to replicate. At that point, the “pretend” world and stage of television was usurped by reality. Which confused the hell out of the cops and was high-larious for the rest of us watching.

Honestly, that was almost like an Improv Everywhere dadaist art piece. I mean, there are some things people could ask: “Why did NBC build that set and just leave it there?” “Why did NBC get a permit and the protesters were unable to?” …. and reflecting on some of the signs NBC made, “Who is John Galt?” I also found it quite amusing that, while every previous battle I’ve seen has been about the police removing all the structures the protesters put up, this one was about the police defending the structures.

Anyways, just saying that perhaps you all should be a little less angry and try to look at this with a sense of humor for what it actually is.

It might serve OWS well to regroup and restart next Spring. Sort of getting a flash-mobby vibe about it. In Spring, the national campaign will be in full gear, weather will be better, and the time off can be spent refocusing. Definitely it needs to rethink the West Coast shipping gambit this Monday. Unless the labor unions are into it, and they don’t seem to be, it’s just going to make them tedious instead of vital.

You could look at this as a disturbance or as a big fat opportunity. How often do TV shows get to accidentally cross over from fictionalized reality to documentary? If they incorporated actual footage of the OWS takeover, it would be a ratings bonanza.

It’s curious that no one is talking about free speech. Isn’t the OWS movement all about supporting the Constitution by expressing their 1st Amendment rights (w/ or w/o a permit)? Then doesn’t it follow that L&O has the same 1st Amendment rights to produce any show they want? Since when are we able to say, hey, I don’t like your show so I’m going to shut it down? That sounds like fascism to me.